


31 Days of Apex, Ash Edition

by bluelivid



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games), Titanfall (Video Games)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/F, Found Family, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 31
Words: 16,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26207179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluelivid/pseuds/bluelivid
Summary: The 31 Days of Apex prompt challenge, with a strong focus on Ash, her characterization, and how she interacts with the world around her.
Relationships: Ash/Gates (Titanfall)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Day 1: Memory

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like one of those clowns in the clown dunking booths at a carnival
> 
> you know the ones where there's a clown in a box sitting on a contraption thing, and you throw the balls at the target and if it hits the seat flips and the clown falls into the water? yeah
> 
> except im the clown and this fic is the one throwing the balls. 
> 
> ANYWAYS this took me fucking forever, like two months and it's just one big love letter to ash. it's shorter than i'd like but it IS a finished fic and honestly. that's an achievement. most of this is experimental, too, kinda stretching my writing legs here, which is fun.
> 
> no warnings in this chapter. thank u for reading xoxo see u at the end. enjoy.
> 
> edit: this fic now has [art to go with it](https://five-by-five.tumblr.com/post/629509958158974976/ashes-to-ash-a-short-comic-based-on) by [five-by-five](https://five-by-five.tumblr.com) go check it out, the comic is wonderful and they're a fantastic artist

It’s hard to piece together what is real and what is fake. What’s happening now, and what is a remnant of the past.

Hard to pick out, from the clutter of thoughts, which memories were hers.

She had overclocked the system, and it worked, unlocking her old mind state and offering up the memories she had long forgotten.

She blackouts.

Not her sensors, those still run, and distantly, she knows that she can see the room fine. It’s a sense of dissonance. She _sees_ the room, _hears_ the computer whir, and yet none of it reaches her.

When she stumbles back, it’s from the mass of data, not the keyboard. Static fizzles, and she recognizes the faces she’s fought. Names she’s heard in her service are names she’s said before. There’s too many of them. She knows too many of them, people she’s fought, killed even, in another life lived side by side with. Fought with, killed with.

She’s not sure when she ends up on the ground. The concrete is chilled under her sunken knees. She fights hard to keep her senses separate from the flood of information. Harder, still, to keep her calm. There’s a faint, growing sense of guilt, of time lost and opportunities passed.

She wonders if they know. Her death mask, her name, would those be familiar to them? She’s known among Vinson, the IMC, mercenaries. As Ash, the simulacrum. Ash, the pilot. Ash, the ruthless mercenary.

She’s more than that, though. She has a name now. Who she used to be, a half-written obituary of a pilot, with the face on her mask and a full name. First, middle, and last, and if she focuses and thinks back long enough, it’s ever-so-slightly familiar.

She separates one faded memory from the rest. It’s mangled, hard to decipher the context when it blends with the rest of the overflow. She can make out a hand on her shoulder, clasped. She follows up the length of it and the colors fade into the foreground, the scene comes to life.

Their face is familiar. She knows them, _well._ She recognizes them, still struggles to pin a name to the face in the messy fog of information. Her chest aches in a weird way she’s not used to. It twists her mouth into a frown and the ghostly feeling of unmoving metal is still there, just quiet and subdued under the vivid warmth of having an actual body again.

They’re... proud? They’re smiling softly and the corner of their eyes pull up into wrinkles. She swallows tensely, nerves a little frayed. They say something, though it goes over her head, and the hand on her shoulder squeezes. That spot burns. She forgot what the weight of someone else felt like.

Her grasp on the memory slips. It starts to fade again, and she lets it go when their face blurs into obscurity.

She has names, now. A handful of them, and a pairing of faces to go with. Some are dead, some were dead long before her. Others, they’re still out there, in the deep void of space and the Frontier. Soon, she will have to deal with the matter of finding them.

When she slows her thoughts and focuses on one of the moments, she hears raucous laughter, loud and joyful. There’s a group around her, familiar, but there’s too many of them to really tell who is who. She looks around, laughs with them.

There’s a name in her mouth, it comes naturally and sits comfortably and when she says it the brightest pair of eyes she’s ever seen look up at her. There’s little crow’s feet, laugh lines, and _oh,_ she’s got _dimples._ It hits her hard, her skin feels hot suddenly and there’s a fluttery feeling in her stomach that she hasn’t felt in this life, and she’s smiling back without even meaning too. She’s not sure how she ever forgot that face.

She fumbles with keeping her cool, and fumbles with keeping the memory clear. It’s too much to handle right now. Reluctantly, she lets it be swept away in the flood of scenes in her mind.

Sometime later, the blur starts to clear. Dream-like memories start to fade entirely. The floor under her is more vivid than the world in her memory. The heat, from the computers, from her overheating, is more than the flush in her cheeks.

Maybe she stays there for longer than is necessary. Than is safe.

She watches the sunset outside the large windows that run along the wall and does her best to sort through the memories. One by one, it’s heavy work, setting aside and connecting and remembering each moment in her mind. Slowly, she starts to tell the timeline. She remembers dying. She remembers waking up.

She remembers the warmth of hands, hugs, fire and blood from gunshots, the hum of turrets and of titans. In that moment, she remembers everything.


	2. Day 2: Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for gore. it's not the focus but it is There. Major character death as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to rewrite this like twice bc i didnt want to have to add the gore tag but i might need to anyways jsdjfdsjf
> 
> anyways u know when ur getting too ballsy in mp and a legion turns around and powershots you? yeah.

In retrospect, she was pushing her luck. She hadn’t needed a battery that badly. Her titan would’ve been fine. If she had stuck with him, they both would’ve been fine.

She had made it past the Scorch’s fire wall, goaded it into using its smoke screen earlier, climbed onto its back without a thing stopping her. Surrounded by its allies, all too busy fighting off hers.

The Legion behind them made quicker work of her ronin than she had expected. A breath away from irrevocably damaged. He had phase dashed out of its reach, voice echoing in her helmet, both a plea and a warning. She turned to face him, and had come face to face with the Legion. Minigun aimed squarely at her mass.

The sparks reminded her of arcstars.

She lays on the reddened dirt, hand pressed against the tattered flesh of her abdomen, blood rising from under her fingers. The skin is torn, her body shredded. She can feel the slippery wet bone of her ribs.

Her hands squish down onto muscle and bone and without meaning to, she sobs out. It doesn’t burn, really, not in the way she’d thought it’d feel like, like fire or frostbite. Agony, moreso, a persistent ache. One big, agonizing mess and her whole body is alight, all too much, all at once.

The battle screeches on around her. No one seems to notice her bleeding out beneath them.

She turns her eyes up to the smoky sky. She can see it without the filter of her helmet, can make out the clouds and streaks of moving ships.

Her helmet might be broken. She’s more worried about that, right now. It’ll be a hassle to get it fixed, she’ll have to be sidelined while the techs work on it, and that’ll be a few weeks at least. She has to get it fixed now, she has to keep moving.

It’s too tiring to get up. She can’t move her arm, it’s not pinned, which doesn’t make sense, it should be fine. She can’t see past the mess of red, either. She tries to sit up, nearly blacks out.

She blinks the fuzz out of her sight and grits her teeth. Calls out, quietly, for Vic. He’s there, circling back around and hovering in the peripheral of her mind. There’s the fighting mess of titans between them, he skirts the edge of the battle anxiously.

Her comms are working, at least. Staticky, garbled, mostly intact, even if she can’t muster the energy to respond to its pings. Her commander is yelling, again. Not at her, she doesn’t think, just yelling. It’s confusing. She can’t tell what he’s saying. Her ear is wet. She touches the side of her helmet with her other arm, it’s cracked and her hands are redder than they were before. Is that blood?

There’s a fog at the edge of her vision. The world is muffled and quiet. There’s someone large shifting over her worriedly. It takes all of her focus to process who it is.

“You will be alright, Pilot. Medics are on their way.” That’s him saying that, right? The voice is mechanic and strained.

With a moment of terrifying clarity, she realizes, truly, awfully, what is happening to her.

And with some measure of bitter-sweetness, she realizes she’s never heard a titan lie before.

At least, not him. Not to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise i'm nice to her later in this


	3. Day 3: Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings, except for general canon-typical violence. also war crimes. which is still canon-typical, somehow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first one i wrote and u can Tell. it's the shortest prompt.

There will be no mercy for Jack Cooper. Not in this life. Not while electricity thrums under the metal that makes up her skin, not while he is trying to send her back to the grave she came from. He has torn apart the testing facility, made a fool of her reapers, and put a stopper in Marder’s plans. She’s bitter, but those she could care less about. She doesn’t concern herself with the personal issues of the IMC nor how fast they burn through resources trying to squash him. It’s funny, even, to watch them scramble. He could torch the facility to the ground for all she cares. She’d even do it herself.

The problem is his boldness. There’s no reason for him to be this way. He’s clumsy, untrained. And still, he lasts throughout the convoluted assembly lines, somehow, even without his titan by his side. He doesn’t burn to a crisp in the heat, doesn’t end crushed and chewed up beneath the processors.

He had no reason to enter the facility. Nothing besides a ticking clock, and yet they chose to risk it anyways. They tried to cut corners and left a path of chaos instead. He’s bold, gutsy. His titan, too. Must be running on adrenaline to feel like he stood a chance against her.

Tore through her simulation and ruined her fun, stood face to face with reapers and didn’t blink. Spit on her trials and broke out of the dome. She’d have sent a pilot in, if she thought it would do any good. He’s getting too bold. He’s coming for her next.  
This will not do. It is time for this to end.

Jack Cooper will not have mercy on her. She’s seen the way he works. He won’t hesitate when they come face to face.

Neither will she.


	4. Day 4: Prize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no specific warnings, just what u'd expect from capitalist megacorps and their hired guns

Before, the IMC had lined their pockets well enough to retire. They’d do it again, too, after this. They always do, and it keeps the Predators coming back again and again. The lure of a big payoff too strong to turn down. For Blisk, at least. He’s the one calling most of the shots.

For her, she hesitates. There’s not much she needs. Upkeep, a hobby, maybe the companionship of her titan. A nice place to stay. All she could afford on the price of their last contract. They pay well. Very well.

So, not money. Not fame either. The Frontier already knows their name, they are already revered by the IMC and feared by the settlers they fight.

Slone’s looking to push the science of titans and to show off, to fine-tune what an Ion could do, and collecting bounties is just part of her process. Kane is here for the blood, trophies or not, he’s looking for a fight, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get it. He’s a simple man. Viper’s here to pay tribute to his ego. Wants to be king of the skies, like he’s got something to prove. Nobody’s listening, but he does it anyways. Richter and Blisk, a deadly duo. It’s money and excitement for those two. Pockets already full, they’re back again for the thrill, as they always are.

Her? She’s not much different, she supposes. It might be habit at this point. Taking on another job with the same outfit, because it’s all she’s ever done. There’s not much else to do when you awaken to a war, built for a war, and with the money they offer, she could have the whole world at her beck and call, for the right price.

After their last job, she found projects to fill the time. Researched, mostly, digging up info with coins. Greased palms, pulled strings. Taught herself about the world, the people in it, its history and its future. Dabbled in arts. Learned skills. Lazed around on feathered pillows and silk sheets. Got bored faster than she was expecting, and realized awfully quickly that nothing about that life was _interesting_ to her.

She’s back here. Again. The same vice. Boots on the ground and gun in hand. In part, for the money. Paying someone else to get the info she seeks. She’s not done looking for answers, won’t be until she knows who she was. There’s a part of her, though, that’s not here for the secrets, that’s just here for the violence. She wants her own niche, carved out in blood.

This isn’t her war, there’s no golden medal or honorary titles waiting for her. No self-aggrandizing cause to fight for. Her prize is not the satisfaction of a war won or a plaque on a statue somewhere.

That’s fine to her. That’s not what she’s here for. She has her own vision. And she’ll get it one way or another.


	5. Day 5: Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> direct references to anxiety and ptsd. minor unnamed character death. this is where the found family tag kicks in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me knocking violently on respawn's door: ash redemption arc when?? ash gets a group of people who love and care about her when??? respawn answer me

She stands, poised on one leg and silent. The rocking of the dropship, the restlessness of the pilots, they do not phase her. Balanced entirely on one metallic foot, she lets the steady barrage of chaos fade into the comfort of the background. The noise of the warfare below can be heard even this high up. The grinding screech of a titan being ground to pieces by another echoes from the ground. The pilots grimace, look around at each other. She can feel their eyes settle onto her.

“Not yet,” Ash says without moving. They know what she means. The drop zone marked on their HUDs is still out of reach. Deployment is several minutes away.

They settle into the sides of the ship. One latches onto the handles near the window, bounces on their heels like that’ll make the time go any faster. They’re not excited. They’re anxious. Once, over paperwork and weapon upgrades, they told her that the ride is the worst part to them. The space in between safety and danger, not quite in battle but not quite in friendly territory. The limbo when time flows too slowly, yet too fast to keep track of. A timeless zone where the moment they drop is a guessing game for them.

She had drawn up a code for their helmet, to display their ETA. It has helped, some. They send their _thank you’s_ in the form of spare parts.

Across from them, their cloaked counterpart has his back to her, gazing down into the fights below. She knows this one better. When he gets back, if he gets back, he will spend the night hunched over a bottle and a book. If he can conjure up a list of mistakes he made, and things he should have done, he will spend the night on the balcony, trying to clear his head. She’ll listen for his footsteps in the hall. Sleep is not a necessity for her as it is for him. There is already a spot cleared for her to rest with him until he returns inside.

They don’t discuss it when the sun comes up. They likely never will. She continues to do it anyways.

The other two are new. Replacements hired by Vinson, after what happened the last time they had a mission at Drydocks. This would be their first battle under her command. Serious, professional soldiers with stone faces, they stuck by each other’s side in a way that wasn’t _purely_ professional. Their answers were always short, never giving more than was asked. Formal and cold. Not rude, but clear they were only here for the paycheck.

And if they take too long fixing each other’s gear before heading out, or their touches linger a bit too often, she never says anything.

The pilot operating the dropship calls out the five minute mark. They are coming up on the actual site of the mission now. Recon and extraction. Get the info, get the target piece, get out. Titans roam the battlefield, infantry from both the IMC and Militia beneath their feet. They’re late. She doesn’t need to look out the window to know there are already pilots down there

Even after Typhon, both sides are still at each others’ throats. This is just another scrap between the two, and their target is nestled right in the middle of the gunfire. Without a doubt, they’ll all be competing for it. Neither side will be allies, and they’ll have to steal it out from under them.

That’s fine, this wasn’t her war anyways. Her loyalty doesn’t lie to the Frontier. Not to a merc group, not to a power-hungry faction. It lies to her, her and these pilots, whose safety she’s taken the responsibility of.

They dawn on the site of their drop. It’s only now that she moves, rising gently off one leg and looking up to see the pilots-her pilots-shouldering their weapons. As they move about the arrival point, the ship slows to a stop, hovering for the departure. Her pilots stand, shift upwards off the wall, let go of the handle near the window, share a look with the others. The hatch lifts behind her. Wind and noise buffet the interior in a rush. They murmur encouragements to each other, one last attempt at a conversation before they dispatch.

She doesn’t say anything as they surge past her and leap. She doesn’t need to. They already know all the things she can’t put into words. They’re her pilots, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it will forever crack me up that ash does yoga on a dropship


	6. Day 6: Noise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ash does yoga in the main room and everyone's just like 'yeah whatever shits weird anyways'

She moves her arms in a slow deliberate arc. Lowers one gently until she feels the soft cloth beneath her fingertips, and raises the other up to the ceiling of the ship. When balanced, she stills and observes the sounds of the room around her.

In the background, the ship’s engines rumble softly. If she focuses on the ground under her hand, she can feel the vibrations echo through the metal. The ever-present hum of the lights, and the quiet beeps of the radio transmitter across the room.

They’re overshadowed by the chatter of the Apex Predators, who have gathered together for the night.

Richter and Viper huddle over a book. A comic book, she remembers, pinched from the aisle of the restock store on the way out of their last pit stop. She can hear him thumbing at the pages, the rustle of paper. He thrills at something in the book and talks, very loudly, about it to Richter. There’s the thud of _something,_ his annoyed cry, and Slone telling him off.

Slone, herself, is tinkering, the clink of a wrench as she sets it down, and the lighter sounds of her fitting metal against metal and screwing it together. It’s a titan component, Ash figures, her already-touchy phasing technology going haywire in the last fight. It’s what she’s spent the last six hours working on.

Viper says something sharp and teasing to her, and the couch creaks loudly, abruptly, with him immediately rescinding his words in an attempt at an apology.

She feels the heavy gait before she hears it, recognizes those footsteps not by how loud they are but by how they thud against the floor.

The door closest to her opens. The couch creaks again and settles, the two quieting down.

There’s a general round of _Blisk_ in acknowledgment which nets a _Stop bloody staring, I don’t care what you’re doing, fight it out in the hall if you’d like_ , in a typical Blisk-like fashion.

The footsteps stop as they pass by her mat. They shift, the soles of the shoes brushing over the rough floor. She hums a greeting at him, and does not move from her position.

He says her name in a tired voice and turns away, thumping towards the radio equipment.

She listens to him call in with their beneficiary. His grumble when they say something he doesn’t like, which dissolves into a low-toned, heated argument. He rarely yells, she’s learned. She finds he doesn’t need to, to get his point across. She lowers her other hand back to the floor and focuses in on the conversation, noting the way the rest of the room has fallen silent as they, too, listen in.

He takes, a minute, maybe two, before he goes quiet and ends the call, hitting the desk and sighing. She can hear shuffling.

“Alright,” he says, “Change of plans, Militia’s pushing towards the west. Everyone move out.”

It comes with a ruckus, the couch creaks again, there’s rustling as they grab their gear, the clink of metal and guns and cases. She hears Viper mumble and complain, hears the comic book hit the table.

Kane’s the first one out the door, with an overly-eager call to action, and the rest follow shortly after. One by one, the room goes quiet, until it is only the steady sound of Blisk’s unhurried steps.

They stop at the threshold.

“Oi, Ash. You too,” he slaps the doorway, “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they're not a family but they sure do annoy the fuck out of each other


	7. Day 7: Mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> talk of death, as usual. no other warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i guess ash's mask isn't just a deathmask but like, integrally important to her functionality. however. i just don't really care all that much. my canon now

It’s so eerily familiar, the face on the mask. A faded memory, a dead pilot, and yet it’s her.

She never got a reason for it. Questions gone unanswered, especially after her second death at Typhon. Rebuilt, a carbon copy of her previous self. Vinson never told her how they did it, where they got the blueprints for her body, or the material for her personality, always dodging the question whatever way they could.

She wonders if her past self had wanted this, if she had known death was coming, and prepared for a second life. Would that Ash have wanted this? Was that Ash even Ash, or had she bore another name, another identity? Was she another person?

She tilts her head, until the light above hits the mask and reflects off. Shining in the mirror, the light cascades over her face, right over her black eyes, which gaze, unwavering, back at her.

It’s so well made. More than just metal, a facet of her body and her functionality. Custom done, like a finely crafted handgun, both decorative and deadly.

The matter of who commissioned it. Who might have thought it worthwhile enough to pay for a mask like this to be made, to immortalize her in porcelain-like metal?

She asked Blisk, once. If he had helped make her like this, if he had known her as a human. She doesn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, but she knows he doesn’t care enough to lie to her. Not about this, at least.

And when he says no, she doesn’t doubt it

She’d say she was back at square one. If she had ever left it in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short lil thing but it works


	8. Day 8: Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> injury and blood. no other warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of human ash content. some hurt/comfort. as a treat. also her titan vc, which she has fondly dubbed Vic

Ash wraps the last of the soft white bandages around her bloody calf and ties it off. The emergency medkit lays open beside her, next to the foot of her titan, who leans over her, crouched, sword in hand. She wipes her hands on the rag she keeps close by, smearing red over the beige cloth. The tin of instant-campfire crackles lowly.

The worst of her wounds are covered in the bandages and antiseptic cream, the rest sting in the open air.

“VC, are there-,” she cuts off with a strained breath as she adjusts herself into a better sitting position, “Are you getting any frequencies?”

“Negative, Pilot. I have detected no friendly units within a several mile radius. I will send out another SOS signal, at your request.”

She rests her forehead against the cool metal of his leg. The shaking in her hands has just begun to subside, adrenaline fading and deep weariness taking over. Her whole body aches with exertion and her head throbs from where she knocked it on the concrete. She needs more painkillers.

“Alright, VC.”

Her titan beeps a binary phrase, optics flashing. He means well, and he’s trustful. He doesn’t quite get how their outfit operates.

He’s counting the minutes until they get a response. She doesn’t expect one at all.

Not for lack of optimism, they’ve got the strength in them to pull through this, and they’ll get home, one way or another. She just knows how this group works. There’s a track record on how they treat their pilots, and it’s not a good one.

Her titan edges in at the corner of her mind. Checking in on her, driven less by protocol and more by concern. With a fond pat on his leg, she shifts back and struggles to her feet.

She favors her right leg, the one that got the brute of the injuries, on her way to the door. They’ve hunkered down in an old garage of sorts. Made for titans, or big mechs, something armed and dangerous, with all the tech still laying around, and it’s not great, but it works. The roof’s tall enough for him to straighten up, though he remains hunched protectively over her helmet and gear. Dust layers the floor, encasing her footprints despite how she tries to avoid leaving any. The windows are boarded up, thankfully, and barred with metal even if they weren’t. With an industrial door, and an industrial lock, she trusts the place just enough to keep them safe for the night. If only for a night.

They’ll move in the morning, when it’s light out and rain isn’t drizzling. She’d rather find somewhere else, and she knows by the way he shifts restlessly, that Vic would too. It’d be smartest to move now. Still, though, the aching of her leg and bone-deep fatigue weigh on her. She’s not sure if she’d make the journey to somewhere safer, and she’s not willing to gamble their lives for it.

She grabs onto the rickety chair tucked into the workbench, and pulls it with her towards the door with a grinding scrape of its legs. Under the rusty handle it goes, the deadbolt tightened and secure. She moves to the closest window next, where she double-checks to see if any of the dim light peaks out. It’s safe, as safe as it can be. Her side pangs, her shirt already damp with blood, clings to the bandages.

She has to take a breather between windows, leaning heavily against a standing toolbox. Struggling to take a breath with an aching chest. Vic eyes her from his spot.

She makes her way towards him, limping. Her side stings, sharp enough to make her pause.

She realizes too late that the bandages tucked against her ribs are bloody again. Patting lightly, the cloth sticky, her fingers coming away damp and red. Her hand reaches for the nearest workbench, and slides off, and then she’s on the floor again. Metal grinds, loudly. Heavy thuds make their way towards her.

She looks up to the staring optics. His outstretched hand not quite nudging her, ghosting against her uninjured side insistently.

She stains his hand red, but pulls herself on it nonetheless. Doesn’t complain, when he tugs the towel from under her helmet and dangles it within her reach. Doesn’t argue as he pulls the blanket from the emergency kit with fumbling fingers and lays it out in his awkward, uncoordinated titan way.

Just pats his thumb fondly and stumbles out onto the softened floor, towel tucked against her wound. It’s warm, next to the fire, makes her think of heated ration packs and toasted sweets she never got to try. She curls into herself and feels a weighted thumb rest on her shoulder. There’s a comfort in his hulking figure, and she lets herself take in the safety of him crouching over her. She doesn’t feel protocol when she presses against the link, only concern. And fondness. A good dose of fondness.

She lets the fire burn. VC watches over them. They’ll be alright, if only for a night.


	9. Day 9: Weapon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> canon-typical violence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also bit of an experimental style. trying some stuff out.

First, it’s her pulse blade. Slipped into its holster, resting snug in the leather against her arm.

_She hurls the knife into the back of the pilot’s head before they can even turn to her. It hits with a slick thud, right through their helmet. Their body hits the ground, and she’s sliding past into the next room. With a kick jump she’s off the ground. Boots on the wall, edging the ceiling. An infantryman sees the trail of her jumpkit, shouts in surprise, sprays a weak shower of bullets in her direction._

Jumpkit, then, fitting neatly against the niche in her back.

_She’s gone by the time the rest of the squad turns. Pushing off the wall, she barely touches the ground as her momentum propels her through the window. She hits the street below and bounces back onto the opposing wall. Brick crumbles under her as her footsteps pound the wall. Sparks fly off her hand, trailing along by her side for balance._

Her phase kit. Already built into her, mostly. Protective armor a permanent feature.

_When the building she’s on runs out, she lets her weight keep her moving and skids across the concrete. Sparks burst and her armor holds strong. Bullets fly, from her left, and she phases, slipping into the in-between with an electric mist. The world darkens and muffles and then she’s clipping back into vivid reality, several steps ahead and nearly in the safety of the next building. She zips through the doorway and directly into a hostile pilot. They tumble through a window and into the open corridor._

Then, her pistol, slotted next to pouches of ammo and grenades.

_The click that tells her she’s run out of ammo comes at the same time the pilot on the wall above her pauses to reload. Out of options, she takes a gamble. She drops her gun. Her pistol is out and pointed before it so much as hits the floor. She misses the first two shots and swears, the third bounces off the rifle on their back. She dashes foward, dips and dives and launches off a shipping crate onto the wall behind them._

__

_She chases the pilot, landing shots that skid off their armor, or ping off the wall in an array of sparks. The ground forces try to shoot at her. Each of their shots miss, not doing much but slowing her down._

__

_With a swift hand, she fishes a grenade from her side. It weighs heavy in her palm as she counts the seconds in the same beat as her strides, ticking down the time in her mind and when it gets close she bowls it into a group of approaching riflemen._

It’s her comms next. She attaches the radio and turns it on standby. Ready to use.

_Her comms kick on, crisp audio filled with commands as Blisk barks out orders and curses alike. She’s designated backup, abandoning the chase, darting through halls and skidding around corners in her rush to the coordinates. She goes mostly unnoticed, fast enough to vault over any troops. Hardy enough, too, to withstand the few bullets that do hit her, feeling more like an itch than an injury._

She picks up the anti-titan rifle from its resting spot against the wall, and returns it to its designated holster.

_The titan is more concerned with Slone tearing into it than it is with Ash sending charged shots, evidently. She keeps moving, skating the wall and hip-firing with the charge rifle. There’s a few stray shots aimed at her. Ground forces, a faraway pilot, maybe, but no one makes a move towards her, so she stays focused on circling the titan, and staying out of reach of it. There’s an art to it, she likes to think, and it’s that art that sets her apart from the rest. Even moreso when the titan goes down in a fiery mess of metal. When there's a cheer over her comms and she hears her name yelled out among Slone's._


	10. Day 10: Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some character hate (caustic). no other warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is.. hmm..
> 
> a bit of caustic bashing in regards to his 'stint' with vinson dynamics and what it might mean for ash. so skip this one if thats not your cup of tea, this is the only time that happens
> 
> also a freeform guess at what working under vinson might have been like. and i say 'working' lightly because when someone has a say over when you live and die, how much of 'working' is it compared to being owned by them?
> 
> edit: okay 'a bit' is an understatement, it's the whole thing

How Vinson could have its poisoned grip around her even now, a question she didn’t expect to have an answer to, or be asked. The measured, steady stare from the scientist. Recognition in a place she did not expect. She knows that face, one of many, filed away with the memories of cold awakening. He plays it off well, even when she stares him down.

_He’s not Alexander Nox,_ they say, _he just looks like him._

_Sure,_ she thinks, _and I wasn’t at Typhon._

She knows that face, and she knows the name on that lab coat.

One by one, she meets the rest. They introduce themselves as _legends_. A colorful cast of characters who all regard her cautiously.

The other simulacrum stares at her intently whenever he passes by. Sometimes he stops in the doorway, stands there. He towers over her by a good few feet. Clawed hands, large stature, and a face like hers. Not a pilot, from what she hears, though he could’ve been.

She’s not sure what brings him to sulk in her doorway, if it’s pity, competition, or something else, only that he wishes her a sarcastic good luck with this new life.

The one with cloudy eyes avoids her. Flinches, nearly, when she turns to stare. Never looks at Ash, really. Just gazes a hole in her with empty eyes. She knows uncanny things, saying words before the others get them out.

She says her name before the others do. Maybe she’s smart, quick on her feet, connecting the dots between the word on her skull and the words in her mouth. Ash isn’t entirely convinced that’s what it is.

The trickster is familiar. It’s his voice. The way he holds himself. His attitude, too. He laughs things off and wilts when no one looks. Resigned and tired, playing the part of the jokester, the fool. He’s ragged too, something in him snapped once, and what’s left is a brittle edge. Move too quickly, and you’ll catch on it. Say the wrong thing, and you’ll catch on it.

She watches the soldier catch on it the most. Finds out from their passive-aggressive banter that he was born Militia.

In another life she knew him.

Then the solider, stiff-shouldered and IMC. She’s not hostile to Ash, just wary. Keeps her distance from and eyes on her. That’s fair, she supposes. She, herself, has been side-eyeing all of them since she woke up.

For all the watching she does, though, she’s unaware of the lies she speaks. There’s always a degree of irony in what she says. A lack of self-awareness.

The cheery engineer catches onto her distrust before anyone else does. Sees the way her gaze follows Caustic, and approaches in a quiet moment. Says she can’t blame Ash, she understands, but just wants to know why.

Ash tells her. Voice cold, she recites the games Vinson played, the leash they kept her on, rebuilding and bringing her back mercilessly. Never quite veering into cruel, though shy of it only by a hair. Ash tells her everything.

How he was mostly a face among faces, one person in a crowd of dozens. Took on the same responsibilities of the others, no worse and no better than the rest, she can still hear his fingers typing on a monitor as she resets. To her, a name among a list. Cracked faces and memories torn from her shell. To him, another chore, an intern’s duty.

Vinson will never understand what they did to her. He won’t either. There’s a subtle kind of fear that comes from owing your life to something that does not care for it. It’s impossible to explain.

He might not remember it entirely, either, and for once, that is a privilege Ash does not have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> respawn please give us ash lore but please don't do her wrong


	11. Day 11: Shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> canon-typical violence. no other warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more human ash! and protective titans! fun for the whole family!

She darts around the corner, just barely ahead of the spray of bullets. She bowls through a group of riflemen before can they so much as aim, the thundering steps of the titan close behind. There‘s the sharp electric swish of a sword, and her heart stops.

She doesn‘t have a death wish, so she doesn‘t look back, but she can feel the weight of the titan behind her even as she slides down the sloping concrete into the muddy grassland of the airfield.

There‘s a rock. Dug into the mud, and she doesn‘t see it until it‘s underfoot and she‘s caught on it. Spilling forward, momentum carries the rest of her and she tumbles headfirst onto the ground with a splash of mud and heavy footfalls behind her.

It knocks the wind out of her and she struggles to get her ribs to stop hurting enough to pull herself up. She shimmies around to face the sky, mud on her helmet, and when she clears it away, the barrel of the plasma gun in her vision.

It’s not a Ronin, it’s an Ion, even though she hears the telltale sounds of a ronin tearing a warpath behind them. The Ion raises its gun and approaches her. Behind it, the noise gets louder. It sounds like Vic. There’s the screech of metal and an explosion. It _is_ Vic.  


Her ronin approaches with thundering strides that shake the earth around her. The titan bearing down on her jerks back, hauling up its gun as the sword clashes with the front of it. Sparks fly as the electrified metal burns a scar across its hull.

He slides in front of her, taking the brunt of the force as the other titan finally starts shooting. Pushing against the Ion with all his might. Metal seers around the sword, and his armor crumples under its bullets. In its face, between the sword and the weight of his chassis, the other titan takes a few stuttering steps back.

Ash jerks, scrambling off the ground and hauling herself up with the nearby rocks, ducking into the cover of the mountainside. She can’t see the fight, but she can hear it, the grinding of metal on metal as her titan relentlessly presses the other. She can _hear_ the streams of electricity as they burn a path across the ground.

The barrage of bullets stop with the sound of particularly heavy hit, followed by a clang that she can feel from here, and a horrendous metal screech. She nearly winces for the other titan’s sake.

 _Enemy Titan down_ , he says over the link.

He scoops her up and huddles her close to his chassis as he dashes towards cover of the closest building, pulling her back and raising her to the ledge. With trembling hands, she pulls herself up onto the roof just as another titan rounds the corner, drawn in by the sound of battle.

“Get to safety, Pilot,” he says, “I will meet you at the dropship.”

He doesn’t give her a chance to argue, he just turns to meet the titan with the same vicious fury as before.


	12. Day 12: Ruins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> talk of unsanitary conditions. no other warnings.

For how little time it has been, the base is awfully dusty. How much of their budget did the IMC bother to spend on sanitation? The pipes that run along the ceiling have already rusted red and there’s enough grime on the floor to make Ash severely regret coming here herself.

_Is this even worth it?_ she thinks. Vinson will pay well for this one, sure, and there’s a chance that a piece of her has been buried here amongst all this dirt, but, oh, is it _gross._

She steps through the filth as lightly as she can, debris from the rotting crates, left there in a hurry some several years ago. The tap-tap of water droplets from a cracked pipe down the hall heralds the cause of the rot. Briefly, she’s grateful she no longer has a nose. Or a stomach. Then she steps in a patch of mold she hadn’t noticed before, nearly slips, and really just wishes she had sent a team here instead.

It takes some time to make her way down the dark corridor. Visibility isn’t a problem for, her optical processors designed with this in mind, though it would have been nice if they hadn’t built this place without a single window. The lights above are out of question, the glass crunching underfoot. She can work without them.

Stopping, she gazes upward to study the bulb and wires. They are silent, broken glass and frayed rubber only that. No longer do they crackle with misdirected electricity as she had hoped. Worrying. She mentally reroutes her path to stop by the breaker room. If the power is out, the database may be too, and she would have to call the retreat until they could figure out a way around it. Better to check before she goes any further.

She leaves dusty footprints down the halls. Between half-collapsed piping and abandoned crates, machinery, too, which she has found to be much harder to navigate safely around, it takes her some time before she can find a usable route.

There’s a frustrating moment when she comes across a cave-in and consequent dead end.

She ends up climbing into an air vent and shimmying through the rickety metal the rest of the way. It’s arguably worse, she can’t see through the clouds of dust she tosses up. Mentally, she reviews the maps over and over. Her sense of direction is already thrown off and the complications along her path don’t help.

She trudges along until she finds what she _thinks_ is the vent to the breaker room. She traces the edges of the vent and fiddles with the loose screws, pulling them out one by one and shifting the grating out of its spot.

She falls to the floor in a dusty lump, and irritably untangles herself and the cobwebs that cling to her metal. Dusting off the dirt is easy. The sticky webbing is dusty, too, and still she can’t gather it off of her without it clinging to her fingers.

She curses once, and looks up to the room. To the light of a pilot helmet and the barrel of a gun staring her down.

She raises a hand hesitantly, urging them not to shoot.

Not that it would do much good, if they decided they have a grudge. After all, she recognizes that helmet, and has faced that gun before.

And, without a doubt, he recognizes her, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack realizing Ash isnt dead: WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT TH


	13. Day 13: Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> very minor gore in regards to ash's death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not a direct continuation of ruins, but it can be read that way. i just wanted some casual jack and ash content where neither of them were actively trying to murder the other.
> 
> also look me in the eyes and tell me jack "the hero of harmony" cooper wouldn't apologize to someone for killing them

He’s awkward. Fidgets with his gun.

It’s an odd twist of fate to see him here. Digging through old IMC tech, the both of them, finding themselves standing face to face. They’re in front of a massive web of wires and computers, a control center, with lit-up screens that casts their faces in light and throws shadows against the far wall.

He’s silent, but he shifts his weight from foot to foot and keeps opening his mouth like he wants to say something. There’s no reason for her to speak up, so she doesn’t. Let him deal with his internal conflict. It’ll just give her more time to transfer the data on those computers. That’s what she’s here for. Not this.

“Hey, uh. Sorry about..,” he lingers on the silence. She remembers his counterpart’s grip around her. The pressure building. Her titan frantic as he watched his pilot be torn from his hull and crushed.

“The events on Typhon were unfortunate,” she says. It’s the closest he’ll get to an apology, or the acceptance of one. She can’t exactly say sorry.

She had caused him significant delay and great trouble. Without a doubt, she would have killed him. That’s the way the wheel turns. It’s not reasonable to call him a murderer for killing her. She would do the same. It would be a lie, though, to say outright that she did not resent him for it. There’s a fierce, twisting burn in her chest.

The thought crosses Ash’s mind, briefly, that perhaps she ought to finish the job. Put two in him. One for the titan, one for her.

She’s somewhat hesitant about it, though, tentatively calculating the trajectory of her bullets, and the time it would take for him to react to her drawing her weapons, mapping out the path this day could take. When she moves a step towards him, and he doesn’t look up, she’s positive she could do it.

He turns, almost deliberately, to the screen. She pauses. An offering? A request? When faced with an old enemy, one who wanted him dead years ago, he turns away. She cannot, for the life of her, fathom why.

There’s no fun in shooting a man who’s not looking. It may not be the unfairness of it that bothers her, simply the gutless cowardice of the action. A cheap shot. Without a test of skills, without a fight, what point is there?

He might know this. Might think he knows her well enough to know that she will not kill him like this. It’s an act of trust. Not in her, perhaps, but in his intuition. Or maybe he just simply doesn’t care what she does.

Either way, she can’t bring herself to shoot him quite yet. Some fried part of her processors hesitates. It’s weak, something that will get her killed again.

Try as she might, she just cannot draw her gun, and she despises it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ash: i am the deadliest pilot on the frontier. i fear no one and i am ruthless  
> also ash:


	14. Day 14: Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings apply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, day 14, my pride and joy. love of my life. apple of my eye.
> 
> more human ash but like....soft

Cross-legged, Ash leans against the flimsy prefab. The flora around her is bright and spiky, poking up with sharp leaves of orange and yellow. She tugs a small one off and rolls it in her fingers. The rising sun flushes over the land, bathing it in warmth. The last dredges of the overnight frost melt away under its steady beams.

She tears the leaf into halves, stacking it and tearing again. Watching the rest of the prefabs, she eyes the alleys and squeeze spaces between the buildings. It’s been half an hour since she sat down here. Her partner is late.

In their free mornings, they meet at the edge of the outpost, the patch of plains overwatching the nearby forest. From here they can see the sway of the branches, and hear, if they focus in on it, the bubbling of the stream that circles around the trees.

Ash sees movement, turns to watch her partner slip through the space between the fence and the building, catching her eye as she nears.

She approaches with a sheepish look on her face, a thermos in hand that glints in the low sunlight. Her scarf is tossed over her shoulder, rather than wrapped around her neck like it usually is, and her hair is frizzy and disheveled, doing that thing where it spikes out when she doesn’t try to tame it. She’s wearing the same shirt she was last night, underneath her armor. It’s Ash’s. There’s a bead of sweat rolling down her temple, and she wipes it off with the back of her hand.

With the other hand, she stretches the thermos out to her and apologizes for being late. Ash shifts upward, rising to her feet to meet her. Face to face, she takes the thermos she holds out. It’s half an apology, half a gift, she says.

There’s more apologies, worried reasons and surprises that took longer than expected. She says it again and again, even when she hushes her.

She only falls silent when Ash unscrews the lid to the thermos, feeling the steam of warm soup. Noodles, and veggies, and whatever mystery meat of the week that came with the rations the brass sent. Better, still, than the grub from the cafeteria.

They move to sit shoulder to shoulder, leaning against each other more than they do the metal behind them. Two spoons, though only one is out of its wrapper and stuck in the thermos. Taking turns sipping the warm, watery, broth. The meat is chewy and dull, the veggies soggy and overcooked, the mix of pepper and parsley unbalanced and nearly enough to choke her. It’s not great, rationed ingredients never are, and they find fun in poking at the prepackaged garbage command keeps sending them.

It’s their thing, breaking down the brass’ every little misstep together. They can’t be affectionate on base (or in uniform, but who’s here to notice?), they’re regulated to sitting out of view, in the muggy areas like this. Between the wet grass soaking into her uniform and the wind tossing up their hair, it’s cathartic.

She is cold though, and if the grass stains she’ll get docked for being out of uniform. It’s worth it, despite that, to be out here with her. She’ll take every complaint they send her way, just to have these moments each morning. So she leans into her partner’s side and tells her she owes Ash dinner tonight.

And if her partner’s subsequent smile turns her stomach into seasick mush, she’ll just blame it on the soup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :')


	15. Day 15: Skull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not any specific warnings, but it does describe the whole 'being brought back to life' thing so there's that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more rambling about roboticness because that the only thing i know how to talk abt

Her head hurts. Her head hurts, _badly._ It starts in her neck, a sharp tension building. From her neck, it creeps along to her skull, then her limbs. Her arm burns first, the left one. A subdued pain below her elbow, it continues its track, flows like electricity down her spine, her legs the next victim. They both ache this time. Thermite, waiting to be ignited. Something is wrong.

Scans that have been queued for years begin to run. Her processors switch off of autopilot. Senses flicker back online.

The thermite ignites. The pain flares up, worse in her neck, where it crackles and burns. Electricity, real electricity, races through her. Every limb, every processor sparks back to life. She is pulled from her low-energy mode to full power, and it is abrupt as being plunged into fire.

A spacial awareness she did not have before tells her she is lifted above the ground, thrashing about, suspended by wires. She jerks, reaches, scrambles for her head, her neck. Alarms flash in her darkened vision.

Her audio processors start to kick in, static overloads it, turning any sound into a garbled mess. There are words in the air, ones she cannot understand. She thinks they are hers. Visual processors begin to turn the black into fuzz.

Finger close around the top of her head, and she pushes. It snaps back into place. The world around her clears. Scans finish, calibrations returning results she has been waiting for, sensible data that can be sorted now that she is not locked behind a failsafe.

A young woman stands before her. Pink haired. Short. She’s apprehensive, takes a step back. Analytical eyes breaking her down into pieces.

Ash to ashes. Ashes to ash. Olympus. The words come easily, programmed knowledge rolls off her tongue.

Thermite ignites. Pieces click. The ghost breaths again. Ash wakes to a new world.


	16. Day 16: Growth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings apply.

It’s been a few years, at least.

The platform she’s stranded on bears clover-like patches, and the surface of the metal greenish and damp. She didn’t need to touch it to know moss has taken over every open inch of ground. Springy, thin plants grow up out of the mesh. Some might even count as saplings, with the way they stretch above her head.

She can see the water from here. It floods the doorway, clogged with lilypads, and the same murky greenish color as the platform. Algae clings to the lilypads and groups around the doorway, hugging the walls and any surface it can attach to.

Vines creep along the sides of the bunker, dangle from the roof, and curl around the edge of the door. Crisscrossing each other and fighting for any opening. They climb up the suspension cords and twist around the electrical wires that she hangs from. Leaves lush and bright, she considers for a second that it might be ivy instead.

There is moss sunken into the broken bits of her chassis. It runs along the seams of the metal. She has done her best to scrape it off, but there is only so much she can do with one hand. Even now, it’s still creviced between her fingers, where she cannot reach.

The first thing she wants when she gets out of here is a functioning body. And after, a rag and a mirror. Perhaps a paint job, too.

Then, she wants to find who did this to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 250 words about plants lmao


	17. Day 17: Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nongraphic character death, consistent death mention

She counts them at the start of the mission. One, fixing a scope onto his gun, two and three chatting to each other, four dozing on the seats. Five and six under the window, playing cards. A small group, this time. More than enough to get the job done. She counts them as they head off the ship. One to six. All there.

Counts them on the evac ship. One, clutching a SERE kit to his chest, two hauling three up and out of danger. Four scans the horizon intently. Five has a first aid kit open in front of them, and their hands are dripping blood. One to five.

She’s on the comms already. The static in her head drowns out what she’s saying. Where’s the last one? One to five, they’re missing a pilot. One to five, they’re not all there.

Six isn’t responding. Their titan isn’t responding. When did they go dark? There’s nothing but silence over the lines, even as she calls to them. They can’t wait. They have to go.

The ship is fatally still as they escape into the atmosphere.

Later, with careful silence, she writes up the death notice. The pen scratches through the quiet. She lists out the Pilot’s info, their next of kin, comes up with a gentle end for them, as protocol dictates. Tries not to wonder how they really went. Whether their signal going dark was their final moments, or if they were-are?-still down there, against the odds.

Sets the pen down and rises. There’s a box tucked near the filing cabinets in the corner, filled with spare dogtags. She keeps a copy of each pilot’s tags. Just in case. Sorts through them solemnly to find the ones with the familiar name on it. Pulls it out and steels herself in an effort to keep her cool.

Heads back to her seat and clips the spares on with a melancholy respect.

These are her pilots. These are her people. There were things she could have done, not put them in so much danger. She should have called the retreat sooner. Watched the comms closer.

Drops the letter and the tags into an envelope, stamps the address on the corner, signs the other side as _Family of [---------]._ She knows this pilot. This letter will never get delivered. There is no one left to read it.

For a moment, she almost humors grief, nearly pulls the dogtags back out with metallic fingers. Selfishly plans to keep them.

Thinks better of it, seals the envelope and slips it into Vinson Dynamic’s pile of outgoing mail with a mechanical efficiency. Ignores the urge to yell, to fight, to storm up to the heads in charge. Tell them what their victories cost. Ignores it all and shoves those feelings down. Turns back to the mounting pile of paperwork and picks up her pen.

These are not her pilots. These are not her people. She does not know them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me while writing this: so what if i took family and then made it sad
> 
> a short one this time bc im saving the 'real' home prompt for freestyle


	18. Day 18: Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> canon-typical violence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also one of the earlier ones, i think like.. the second one i did?

Viper takes to the skies far more obnoxiously than necessary. He seems to think that being above everyone makes him...above everyone. She wonders if she could get away with taking him down a notch. Perhaps Blisk would turn a blind eye.

They traverse the rocky terrain in their titans. The air is too smoky to be safe, and though that wouldn’t affect her, the fire beneath their feet would. Gunfire echoes among the trees. Frantic yelling, screaming, too. The charred remains of the _MCS James MacAllen_ swarm with Militia troops. They’re like ants, some fleeing into the forests of Typhon, others scrambling back to the ship, to their inevitable fates at the guns of the IMC. And to them. The Apex Predators.

They don’t wait to find survivors. They hunt them down, following the trails of blood and footprints in the muddy ground. Viper rises above the rest to scope out the area ahead. There is a titan nearby, she can hear its rumbling, and it is not quiet in the way it moves.

She slinks along the side of the path. Far enough back to not be spotted, just behind Blisk and Kane, who will take the first hits of the fight. Her ronin class creeps with a stealth the others’ do not possess. Phase dash at the ready, sword unholstered, she is silent death. They will not notice her until it is too late.

That titan will be hers. If Viper doesn’t get to it first.


	19. Day 19: Target

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> general talk of the apex predators being shitty, as per usual

Her target is the rogue pilot. Now that he is here, trapped, she should scuttle the entire complex. Bring it to ashes with every IMC foot soldier and MRVN inside of it. Solve their problem, and burn through their resources in one go. Later. For now, she turns the factory into her plaything. Flips controls and rotates entire sections, soldiers in her path be damned. This place has been gifted to her, and she will get wring its worth out of it if it kills her.

In a way, her target is the IMC, too.

It’s not that she dislikes them. She doesn’t care, really. She has connections to the Remnant Fleet, somewhere distant in her past, but that is a rogue element as much as this pilot, and she knows she will not find anything here. It’s more that they beg for the help of the Predators, and undermine them in the next breath. To them, they are heartless mercenaries, cruel and ruthless. They’re right.

However, they doubt the Predators. Doubt her. They assume that their ruggedness means they are the same as any seedy lowbrow mercenary group, made out of unskilled bastards scrabbling for enough money to pay for their next drink.

That is their fatal mistake. To underestimate them for a single second is to sink a knife into their skin with their own hands. The Predators are as ruthless as they are skilled. And they are very skilled. The Frontier fears them for a reason.

The fodder here seem to think she is a disposable piece. That the metal of her chassis is any reason to fear her less.

Kuben Blisk has put here, in one part, to keep her busy, because she is dangerous when she is bored. In another, because there is no one else with the patience and wit to kill a man without touching him. Blisk doesn’t underestimate her. Blisk is smart, that is why.

The IMC is not. And she will bleed them dry for it.


	20. Day 20: Friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings

He does not mention the time or how late it is when his pilot creeps out of her room to join him in the hangar, a book tucked under her arm. Only raises a palm for her to step onto. She doesn’t stand, instead she slides onto it and rests aside on the curve of his fingers. Fits into the alcove of his hand snugly. She merely stares wordlessly as his optics peer down at her.

“Is something wrong, Pilot?” he says.

She crosses her legs and settles onto the metal, “No. I wanted company, is all.”

His optics tilt and he vents, shifting back into his spot and straightening up, raising his hand to bring her to eye level. She doesn’t seem to mind, only pulls the book into her lap and leans back against his hand. The cover of the book is hidden in her lap. He peers, trying to make out the words on the page, but between her position across from him, and the minuscule size of the text, it’s a lost cause.

With that, he settles for watching the hangar, scanning up and down the length of the hall. Eyes on the door at one end, then the large hatch at the other. Normal protocols would have him in low power mode, though his pilot sitting in his hands has Protocol 3 ringing in the corner of his vision. He scans, systematically, optical systems sweeping side to side, keeping watch. As duty dictates.

A hand atop his optics stop him.

Without looking up from her book, she says, “You’re being distracting.”

He pauses and peers down at her.

“Come here,” she moves, scooting over to rest to the side of his optics. He doesn’t bother telling her that he cannot ‘come here’, nor that she is the one moving instead of him.

She leans against him, facing outwards towards the rest of the hangar. The book in her hands is clearer now, the words within his sight and no longer upside down. From here, he can peer down and just barely make out the shape of complete sentences. An improvement, but still too far to read.

“Can you see it from here?” she asks.

“Not entirely, Pilot,” he says remorsefully.

She shifts the book closed again and gazes at him.

“Alright,” she says quieter this time, and opens it again.

He’s content just to sit with her. But she starts to speak again, and it takes him a minute to process what she’s saying. It’s not conversation, not something that crossed her mind. It’s something else.

She’s reading it, the book. Out loud. For him.


	21. Day 21: Scar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> implied violence, no other warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ash gets fucked up and viper...is viper.
> 
> im also a viper stan and it SHOWS in this

She traces down the crack in her mask with a careful hand. Her optics are on the fritz, vision as broken and shattered as the spot the bullet hit. It hadn’t lodged itself very deeply in the material of the mask, nor in the processors beyond it. A small stroke of luck that she considers as she listens to the clink of metal.

“Bullet’s out,” Viper says. He’s sitting in front of her with a toolbox and a tray of parts, Blisk’s hovering over his shoulder. He picks up a tool she can’t make out and reaches up to her face, “Now the mask. Let’s see the damage.”

Tool in hand, he prods around the edges. He spends most of his time messing with a few select spots. Wedges the tool between the mask and the metal, picks up another tool and twists it beneath. She focuses her fractured sight on Blisk as best she can. He shifts his weight from foot to foot as he peers down to where Viper sits.

She hears the din of metal on metal and knows that he is making progress on the mask. It takes time, but it happens again, once more, two times, three, four, metal parts pinging against the tray he has at his side. He lifts his hands to her face and gently pries the mask away, slipping it off of the tiny screws that held it in place.

He comes away with two separate white pieces, frowning at both. She realizes now exactly what the shot had done. Vision still unclear, she reaches out and takes the pieces from him, holds them together like that might meld them back into one.

Viper leans over the toolbox once more, “We’ll need something to hold it together, some of that liquid adhesive might work. Unless you think we can get another, Blisk?”

Blisk is already moving, headed down the hallway, and waving away Viper’s attempts to call after him. He looks to her, then back to the door.

Eventually, he shrugs and turns to her, pulling some of the more precise tools out. He’s worked on his Titan before plenty of times, optics and all. So he says. Fixing hers won’t be any different. She just hopes he’s better at it than he claims to be.

The next part is much more stressful. With a set of tools messing with her processors and sending all her data into a mess, the best she can do is sit stone still and weather the storm. With any luck, he’ll get it first try and she can go back to not needing to rely on anyone.

It takes a bit, trying different things and using nearly every tool at their disposal. He chatters all the while, to Ash’s irritation.

Eventually, something clicks, and her processors reboot automatically. The world goes dark and stiflingly silent for a moment before she’s plunged back into light and color. She can make out Viper’s familiar features with ease. The tools in his hand are no longer hazy objects, and the tray with small bits of metal and the bullet are clear on the ground beside him. Her mask lies in two fractured pieces in her hands.

The bullet hole is dead center in the forehead. From it, webs of cracks spread outward across the surface. With another hit, she’s sure it would’ve shattered entirely.

She can already see the night of work laid out ahead of her, patching every crack and wound so it wouldn’t fall apart. To rebuild it to last in battle. The possibility of a replacement already out of the question.

There’s a series of beeps and Viper pulls the flashing screen of the comms off his belt, squinting in the light, and typing rapidly back.

She rises from her seat and moves to the hanging mirror situated above the dining table.

She stares at it, the reflection of skeletal, dark metal staring in return. It rocks her, unsettles her to her core. With unsteady hands, she raises the pieces of the mask up to her face, stares through the empty sockets and at herself

Footsteps break through the silence as he comes to stand by her side. Their reflections gaze back at them.

He nudges her with his shoulder, and she drops her hands and turns away from the mirror.

“You’ll be like us,” he says, turning with her, “All scarred up. A proper merc.”

She’s caught between ignoring him, hitting him, or thanking him, so she just leans in to jostle his shoulder, the same way he did to her. It’s stiff. Awkward. He stares at her, a look of disbelief playing on his face. She regrets it for half a second, until he laughs and elbows her hard enough to knock her off balance. When she has to press a hand back against the wall to steady herself, he only laughs harder.

He knocks her arm again, much softer this time, and says, “C’mon, Ash. Blisk’s got something to help, and Richter’s waiting for us. Let’s get your mask fixed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i poke fun at viper but like... he's a very interesting character and i adore him very much.
> 
> also he's arguably the least Awful out of all of them. at least he doesn't like...commit a war crime in game...like some people...


	22. Day 22: Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is...~real funky~

She can’t tell whose face it is, exactly. She’s seen her before, and at the same time, she’s never met this person. There’s a woman at her side as they walk through the town. She’s dark skinned, hair cropped close to the scalp in tight grey-black curls. Stands taller than her, by a little, maybe. Looking at her, she feels infinite. Incredibly bigger than her, Ash feels so small in this body, confined at every level. This woman is infinite. The body she wears is a veil.

At some fundamental level, she has met her. Not in this life, not in another. But she knows her. And the woman knows Ash, better than Ash knows herself. Yet again, she is small. A child, an infant, only just beginning to stand. The world is infinite, ever-expanding, so beyond her comprehension. This world is infinite. This woman is infinite.

They pass by a shop window in their stroll. Through the glass she sees not the store but a snapshot of another life.

There is a man. He sits, worn clothes and dusty hair, on his porch, leaning back in a chair. A pocket knifed flipped open between his fingers, a scowl on his face

She barely sees him, and, instantly, she is consumed. There is red. White-hot rage. It stings her eyes and her lips and her skin. Somewhere, something deep erupts. A potential, set fire by the past blood on this man’s hand.

She can’t tell who he is, but he hates her. He spits on her, on her heart, her soul, stomps on her humanity, tells her she won’t live in his world. It’s not about her. Not about Ash. And for a moment, she is not Ash. For a moment, it is about her.

She has never seen this man before, and she will never see him again, yet for a moment, she. Is. _Furious._

It burns, it burns so deep it is not _hers._ She stops in her tracks, roots spring from her feet and dig into something long dead and it burns _burns **burns** , and she is angry._

It is strong, it is old, and she is its vessel.

“Ash. Stop waiting.” There is a strong hand on her arm, gripping with command. The woman has turned back to her, facing her with a deathly serious look, there is no room for question, compromise.

She says something in return, she thinks. She can’t quite tell if it’s her, or what she says. It feels like she’s opened her mouth, the words have left her, it’s nothing of substance, so it falls quiet. She wonders if it’s the woman keep her quiet or the rage.

“You know what you have to do. Now do it.” What she says, without words, is _now you get it._

She takes a step back, stands and watches as the vivid nonsense of sleep takes over. The to-scale, detailed, real world they walk in dissolves around the edges and leaves Ash in the colorful in-between. She feels her senses, her grip on reality melt as she falls into the dream full on. Ever still, the woman watches, amusedly. Vivid, detailed, real.

“Don’t be afraid,” she says, and waves her off, “But you have to do it.”

She’s still not sure what she’s supposed to do, even as that dream fades away into the waking world, only that determination sits heavy in her chest.

On some level, she already knows.

Just a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next year im choosing someone who can actually sleep + dream bc this one was a straight up nightmare to write


	23. Day 23: Meal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also an early one

Ash sits side by side with them, as though mealtime was anything but an inconvenience for her. Blisk would not bother her should she leave. Blisk didn’t care. She nearly walked out, earlier.

She didn’t, though. Not with the way Viper tugged at her wrist to sit down, or the way Slone slung an arm around her shoulders to corral her back to the group.

She couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, she ran off the energy of her thermal core. There was no reason to be here, and no reason for them to want her there.

They weren’t friends. Not even close. They were mercenaries, bloodthirsty and greedy, and they argued more than they got along. On a good day, she’d only come _close_ to shooting Viper. Yet he was determined to keep her, and the rest of them, near.

So she didn’t leave. She sat as they ate, listened to Richter’s bad jokes and suffered Slone’s arm nudges. Hummed in displeasure when Kane made morbid comments that had the rest of them shouting him down. Called Viper out on his misuse of military jargon. Watched Blisk watch them, with steady eyes and a knife in his palm.

They were not friends. Could barely stand each other. But, with more time, they could be a team.


	24. Day 24: Hobby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings

She settles the ceramic pot back into its spot on the narrow sill. The sun here is warm on her hands and bathes the damp soil of the plant in light.

She reaches for the decorative pot next to it, and the budding sprouts within. It’s outgrown its current home, stretching taller than she had expected and in need of repotting.

Setting on her desk is a larger pot, too big for the sill but enough to fit under the window outside. It sits on a towel, next to a bag of soil and some spare fertilizer in a tiny mason jar. Hanging over the edge of the desk is a worn rag, stained black from oil.

The brown-red painted ceramic thuds softly as she places the plant down beside the larger one already situated on her desk. Clear of papers, of contracts, schematics, and payment records, she can almost pretend that this is her job, not just a hobby.

It’s a hardy one, the plant, but she’s careful in the way she lifts it out of its pot. Stray dirt falls off, though most is held tight by the abundance of roots that hold the shape of the pot with their thickness. She’s gentle as she tugs away some of the chunks.

Slowly, she moves it over the larger pot. Slowly, as to not send sheets of dirt onto her desk.

She’s already emptied the center of it, pushing the soil to the sides and packing it up to make space for the new plant. With a steady patience, she lowers the bundle into the pot.

It sits nestled in the hollowed space. She twists the cap off the little jar of fertilizer and sprinkles a generous amount into the surrounding soil.

With the curtains drawn back, the rising sun floods into her room. Casting shadows and reflecting off her metal hands, which work quietly to cover the vulnerable roots. She piles the dirt on the sides of the pot into the open middle. Presses down the loose dirt, packing it tight against the roots.

With that done she makes plans to move it out into the little garden tucked beneath her window. The soil here won’t sustain the plants she’s growing, the pot a necessity that will fit well next to the half dozen others. She’ll replace the dirt in the old one, get something more fertile, and see how well that new packet of seeds does.

She pulls her hands back and wipes the excess dirt off on the rag, taking the smaller pot and tucking it back into its slot on the window sill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ash gets to garden bc god knows she needs a hobby besides killing people


	25. Day 25: Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> talk of death. existentialism. the usual.

It might be the quick pace of close quarters combat, hit-and-runs with her titan, sending pilots and grunt alike to their graves. Or the long game, setting ambushes, plotting troop movements, standing there side by side with her allies, ready to make the call that will decimate entire armies. She’s not quite sure what is it. The thrill? The allure of the kill? The synthetic adrenaline? The reason she’s still fighting. It’s why she’s giving up the chance of early retirement to continue taking contracts.

She loves that thrill.

Still, too, knows the other side of the coin. It’s been a long time since she felt fear. Her skills, her equipment, her team, hold her back from that cliff.

But she felt it. When that titan wrapped his hand around her. Gripped her ronin, broken and tattered, in the other. She came face to face with an inevitability she didn’t realize was there. Reckless immortality led to what? A gruesome end trapped in a metallic fist. Regret had dawned on her, then. A foreign, startling thing, feeling the weight of what _should have been_ pressing down on her.

Things she could have done, should have done, every decision and inaction giving way to a second death. She can’t help but feel like she could have prevented it. Runs every bit of that last battle through her mind, and analyzes it with a critical eye, searching for any misstep. Worries when she finds few, no mistakes to be mended. Just the inevitability. If she had scuttled the entire factory earlier, brought it down onto the pilot the moment he stepped foot in it, it may have been different. But the fight, the final confrontation? They did everything they could. They never had a chance.

It’s not something she’s used to. The loss of control, feeling order slip out of her fingers. More than that, too. Death looming in the corner. Failure. To kill a gutsy pilot, to fulfill the contract, to do the bare minimum of protecting herself, her titan.

She was afraid then, and still, just a little, the sting of fear hangs in the back of her mind.


	26. Day 26: Holiday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> religious holidays. no other warnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ash i dont care if respawn didnt give u anyone, you're getting that fucking found family trope if it kills me

She stops midway down the hall when she sees it. Leaves, and a splash of color that wasn’t there before. Her door sports a wreath, speckled with bulbs of shiny red-ornaments, she realizes-and the yellow squares of post-it notes. She approaches the mess cautiously, glancing up and down the hallway to check for whoever might have left it.

The sticky note on the door reads _Happy Holidays!_ in red and green pen. There’s a doodle of a fir tree next to it, with little boxes underneath it, and a star on top. Lines shoot off of the star, like light.

Tucked underneath the first, another note sticks out, and she peels back the original to read the scribbled red-and-green on this one.

_We’ll be in the cafeteria for the rest of the night!! Please come!!_

She appreciates the overly-detailed smiley face after it, and its colorful droopy hat. Sticking the original note back onto the door, she turns down the hall. Paperwork could wait, for now.

She makes her way to the cafeteria, on her way in sidestepping the conveniently hung bundle of plastic leaves on the door sill above, hidden among the glitzy rainbow lights.

A cheer goes up from the seats, filled with her disarmed pilots, dressed red and green, red and white, or _in some cases, red and white and a beard._

They’re centered around a tiny plastic fir tree, sitting atop an ammunition crate and decked in artificially red strands of holly. There’s a glittery yellow plastic star at the top of it. The tip of the tree bends under its weight.

The tables are pushed to the sides, to make room for their little circle. It’s somewhat clinical, the chairs hard and plastic, the air cold, not cozy, the tree cheaper than the bottle of liquor nestled under it.

It works, though. Most of them are bundled up in blankets, or nurse steaming drinks. They seem warm, and happy.

One of them raises a cup of milky white. She gazes at it with some hesitance.

“Eggnog,” he says, angling it towards her, “It tastes like, uh, well, uh-”

“Shit, it tastes like shit,” The one with the red-green, pointy-eared hat says. “That’s why I’ve got hot chocolate. Someone in here has to have standards for their drinks.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”

She lets them bicker and turns away towards the pilot approaching her side.

They’ve got on the ugliest sweater she has ever seen, tacky in all its gaudy festive glory, and a hat with a little white pompom at the end, sliding off their head, slowly but surely. If they turn too quickly, she’s pretty sure it’d fly off. In their hands is a messily wrapped _something._

They bounce on their heels, once, twice, and thrust the bundle into her arms. She takes the bundle with some caution. It’s soft, and it molds in her hands, shapeless. Not a box, then. It feels like cloth.

“Open it!” they say, eyes wide as they sway just a little too much. There must be more than eggnog in that drink, she thinks.

Hesitantly, she pulls off the stick-on bow and slides a finger under the seam of the paper, ripping along the tape that holds it together

The paper tears away to show soft, dark, embroidered fabric. She pulls it gently out of the paper, tugging the wrapping off and letting it fall to the floor quietly. She unravels it, splays it out on her hands, admiring the golden thread and dark velvet.

It’s embroidered, hand embroidered she thinks, all along the edges. It’s soft, and warm, and exquisitely gorgeous. She’s taken back by the effort put into this, struck by a sudden sense of fondness and appreciation.

She clutches it close to her chest, digging her fingers into the soft cloth.

“Thank you, Pilot,” she says softly, “Thank you.”

Gently, reverently, she folds it over her arm and pulls it close. She keeps it like that for the rest of the night, tucked tight against her, not once putting it down. And if tomorrow, when she meets them in the hangar, and she’s wearing a brand new hood, she knows they won’t say anything.


	27. Day 27: Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> talk of dead bodies and the aftermath of war

They walk, steps in sync, through the rubble. She looks to the left, then the right, then left again, scanning the debris for bodies-or survivors.

Cloudy grey, both the skies and the smoke, the ruins around them, a sickly monotone.

She spots a boot sticking out of a fallen house, trapped under debris and unmoving. Picking her way to it, she can make out the intact body. She waves her titan over, to the collapsed roof and heavy wooden slab.

“Help me with this,” she says.

He does, using his weight and strength to take ahold of the roof and lifting it up. It falls to the side with a crash, throwing up dust and debris in its wake.

Underneath, she can see the body in its entirety, with blue-tinged lips and ashen face.

Tucked against the body, with its arm curled around it, rests a bloody wooden box. She pulls it out of its grasp, flicking off the excess blood.

It’s small, small enough to fit snugly in her hand and the blood-soaked surface bears lacey, flowery carvings.

There’s a deep gash in the wood, scorched and cracked. She can make out the inner mechanics of the thing, visible, just barely, through the split.

She pulls the little rusted crank around and around. It _click click clicks_ in its wind up, and a few shy notes tremble out when she lets go.

The top unfolds and a fragile figurine lifts up, spinning around. Thin and wiry, she can make out the carved muscle on its dark porcelain skin, and the detailed ruffles on its baby pink dress. It turns as the music plays.

Resting flat against her palm, the tiny box warbles out a pitiful, scratchy lullaby. She listens as it rings out. In a family house, it wouldn’t sing over the noise of a TV, or rambunctious siblings, but in the relative silence here, the deathly blanket of quiet that has settled over the ruins, it is so, so, loud. 

Loud enough that a few of the soldiers ahead turn back to look, staring at her or the box, she cannot tell.

It’s quiet as the box dits out its tune. The world sinks into a gentler state, the soldiers stop chattering, her restless titan settles, and Ash stands breathlessly still.

The music lasts twenty-two seconds. She counts.

She imagines its history. What shelf did this sit on? Or was it a nightstand? A family heirloom, a piece of history resting out of reach, or a gift to a child, something to soothe away the nightmares? How many little hands turned this crank? How many peering eyes watched the spinning figurine?

Would she have had one, too, as a child?

She waves to her titan to open the cockpit. Placing it at the base of the seat, and sliding it into a nook underneath, slotting neatly between a medkit and some ammo cases.

It’s not in her orders to take salvage. As if she ever follows orders.

She pats the door as it closes, with the music box tucked away safely inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is it sentimental? is it a trophy? is ash feeling an Emotion? who knows


	28. Day 28: Treasure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings

She applies the lines of paint with steady hands. Bringing the brush over the hull of her titan again and again, sitting in companionable silence.

It’s not quite the same shade as before, so she’s deigned to redo the whole of the nose. Earlier, scrubbing off the rest of the remaining paint, after the majority had been scorched off with thermite, synthetic fire. A clean slate now, freshly repaired and glinting in the light.

She runs a thumb over the spot where the metal had cracked, torn open and split with the force of gunfire. Patched over and welded with newer metal. Of which, she hopes, will hold up better in battle.

Her titan shifts under her hands, and she hums at him to still before swiping the paint-heavy brush between the taped outline again. And then again, and again, a steady routine until it is filled out with yellow and needs to dry.

She sits back and drops the brush back into the paint can. He pulls away from the scaffolding and bounces his weight on either leg, leaning back and shuddering.

“Come here,” she says, waving him back, “I have to finish the rest.”

There’s not a lot left to do, really, she finished most of it earlier, the background at least. She lets the yellow dry and tops it off with another coat. Does the top portion above his optics the same yellow as the rest.

He shifts almost every time she lifts her hands away. A vent through his air intake and bouncing from foot to foot, which would be endearing if it didn‘t shake the scaffolding and nearly sending the bucket of paint off the edge.

“Hold still,” she hushes and bats at his hull. The tape comes away easy enough and she’s left with the straight edge of the paint.

She goes over that, too, with tape on the other side and the barest bit of metal between them that’s then painted and outlined with white.

It takes time, between letting it dry and coating it again. She sits, cross-legged on the scaffolding with him, watching the other soldiers pace up and down the hangar. Between the painting and the drying, they talk. At first they discuss missions, things that went wrong and ways to improve, upcoming briefings and the sort.

And then, somewhere between painting the skull and the horns of their insignia, he asks why she doesn’t get the maintenance crew to do this instead.

She doesn’t answer right away. She sets the paintbrush to the side and gazes down the hangar. It would be easier, and quicker. The costs are already covered in her contract. Someone with training and experience could do it.

Though, she sort of enjoys sitting up here like this. It‘s quiet. A bit quieter, at least, than it is at ground level. Here they sit above the foot traffic. Out of sight, out of mind, out of the way for anybody to talk to, which Ash particularly enjoys. She tells him that, in simpler words.

And in part, it‘s just them, a bucket of paint between them and a future laid out before them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what if the real treasure was the friends we made along the way?


	29. Day 29: Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> implied violence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 29, also known as 'potentially respawn hate mail, we'll see how it goes'
> 
> edit: this is respawn hate mail. tom let's go outside i want to talk.

She rubs the fabric between two fingers. It’s stiff, not what she’s used to. Not that she’s used to any of this, the new legs feel foreign, the new arm a slightly different build, different weight. Unusual altogether.

She’ll work with what she’s been given. The thick woolly blanket, fabric rough at one end, where it’s clearly been cut in half and sized to fit as a hood, though it’s still too big and will hang down no matter how she folds it. She picks at the discolored fuzz and stray threads.

The weave is tight-knit and strong, built to last, at least.

She drapes it over her shoulders, then wraps one end over the other and loops it around. Pulls, adjusts, and then shifts the bulk of it over her head. Donning a hood like her second skin.

It settles on comfortably, and she breathes in the reassurance of its weight.

She misses her old hood, the soft embroidered cloth, the silky velvet. It’s a far cry from this, but it will do the job. She’ll take anything. She missed the cover and the feeling of her hood more than she misses the hood itself.

She pulls the blanket a little tighter and thinks. Thinks of how impersonal this feels. It's some old blanket dug out of somebody's linen closet and chopped to fit. A blanket easily replaced. Not to be missed. The people she is reliant on dug her out of the ground like some buried treasure to be discovered and sold, and she waited for them to rebuild her piece by piece, at their own leisure. Handed her over to Hammond as soon as they were done. Like she’s merchandise. Like she’s not alive.

When they come for her, she clutches the hood, out of options. She goes with them. The legends watch with blank eyes.

It's not quite disdain that builds, but it's something close. 

They meet again, eventually. When Hammond is done with her, when she is worn and tired and so very, very broken. They pull her from a bad spot, and applaud themselves when they fix her again. The ones who damned her in the first place.

She just wants to find herself back at the home she remembers, with the people she remembers but it’s them she ends up with instead and it’s a far cry from everything she ever wanted.

She tries to ignore the steady tension in her chest at their glances and comments. It stings, a little, the blatant disrespect. They think her someone she’s not. They never connect the dots. She knows she’s got blood on her name and someone, somewhere, wants her dead, so she keeps quiet, stays safe. Uses the mask of amnesia and hopes they underestimate her.

And, oh, do they ever. She plays the damsel and they eat it up, every bit of it. They don’t question her supposed lack of memories, they don’t wonder how she knows her name, they never even begin to look into who she might have been. They underestimate everything she ever was. To them, she is soft, she is weak, a silly sim caught up in the big fish’s game, used as a pawn. Without realizing that to be a simulacrum, she first had to be a pilot. Had to be valuable enough to bring back to life.

She sits quiet and rolls with the punches, gets through it day by day as she collects info, resources, money. Sits quiet when they mention names, places, clues that she tucks in the back of her mind and files away in her databases.

She helps with their paperwork, grows close to them and helps with their finances. They pay for her room and board with their blood money, with their condescending pity. Wordlessly, she takes all they offer, and more, too dollish, too gentle to be a threat. Their info, their history, their finances. Siphons it away under their noses and they never suspect a thing. She plays the damsel. They play the fool.

It’s more than disdain this time. Watching it grow with a bitter vengeance. Making her plans.

She is Ash. They will not keep her down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *stares directly at respawn* Do Not clown on my girl


	30. Day 30: Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> talk of potential death. no other warnings

He bends down to her level and silently outstretches a hand. She steps onto it lightly, presses a hand against his thumb to balance herself.

He brings her up to his optics, metal to metal. They’ll have to get ready soon. The pilots around her have already embarked, she hears their titans shifting and finding their places above the drop hatches. If Blisk is watching them, and he is, she can always feel his eyes on her when he does, he doesn’t say anything.

She requests a scan on his functions, a rundown on the mission, and an assessment on what he expects from this trip. He returns it all a second later, not a moment’s hesitation. He’s well-armed, at top performance, and he lists their goals in a neatly line in her HUD. He even sends a percentage of success.

Their lives are on the line, she reminds him.

The resounding _I know_ that comes back over the link, not the comms, makes her look him over once more.

She knows he’s not incompetent. They’ve spent hours training, forging out the boundaries of their bond and finding a fighting style that blends the best of both of them. She knows she’s not incompetent. Her skills are deadly, and her titan is nothing if not a foil to those skills. It’s just a matter of putting it to the test. Without a safety net, without a button to exit the simulation.

With a nod, wordlessly, she waits as he pulls her back and opens the door to the pilot seat. One hand on the grip, she swings into the seat in a fluid motion. Buckles herself into the harness, and closes the door.

She catches the door of Blisk’s titan start to close, the last to embark. The hiss of her door sealing itself comes with the static of the comms kicking on, the bickering of the others flooding into the enclosed space. Their first mission as pilot and titan. Her processors whirl in a mimic of anxiety. There’s no guarantee that what they practiced in training will stick. There are no guarantees in war, she knows that, but this is different. If she goes down now, it won’t be a mark on her reputation. It will be a mark on theirs, the two of them.

There’s more than their lives on the line, she supposes.

They’re over the battlefield now. The ship’s pilot’s voice rings in. The countdown to titanfall begins.

She’s not used to being responsible for someone else like this. She’s not used to having someone at her back, either. Protocol Three hanging in the peripheral of both their visions. A requirement to her titan, a reminder to her, that now she has someone to take care of in the fight. Who will take care of her.

No guarantee that either of them will make it out of this. The hatch below them clicks, and they fall, side by side with a half dozen other titans, and in the belly of hers. She supposes she’ll just have to trust in them.


	31. Day 31: Freestyle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no warnings. found family tag comes back into play :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lads this is it...we did it..

She follows the paper trail, the words of the locals, to the prefab farm nestled in a field at the edge of town. It’s two stories for the most part, but a corner breaks off into the third, rising up like an attic. She doesn’t miss the large tarps, either. They’re boosted up on wooden poles and rise higher than the building itself. Titans, maybe. To cover them from the rain, which drizzles down in light sheets, blown sideways by the wind.

There’s a tree that climbs beside the rustic house. It’s thick at the bottom, but the upper half is light enough that it sways back and forth nonetheless. A wooden bench sits pushed up against its trunk, uneven and worn.

So, they’ve settled down.

The wind pulls at her shawl and the rain soaks it thoroughly, heavy weight draped over her shoulders. She gives it a half-hearted tug.

She’s surprised they found their way here. Somehow, she had always pictured them fighting until it took them out. Dedicated to the cause to the end. It’s what they do, their job, their livelihood, loyal to a fault and equally as stubborn, that’s just how they are. She’s not known them any other way.

She walks carefully through the shallow gullies in the field. Sure not to step on any of the growing plants. She eyes the little hand-painted signs that she can’t quite read, tucked beneath leafy greens.

It’s quaint. Modest. Large enough to grow the produce they might need, maybe a bit extra to sell in town. She caught word of them at the market, first. They’re well-liked here. A part of the community.

Mud builds around the edges of the field, the rain ultimately getting the best of the earth, turning it into sludge. She wades through it and into their front yard. Unruly, and homey. Wild grass poking up in tall batches, peppered with white and yellow little flowers that find their way around the grass to face the sun. They hover near the edges of the gravel path she steps up onto.

The path follows the yard and curves beside a wooden table and its set of chairs, left untucked and astray. She trails the gravel around it, approaching the house with each step.

It’s prefab, flimsy metal and open windows covered with curtains. She can hear chatter, the clink of dishes, someone says something loud and the rest of them erupt into laughter. It makes her pause, with a strange buzz in her processors. It’s a little surreal. This is them. She’s finally here.

She takes the steps one at a time, deliberately and slowly, wood creaking under her weight. There’s no light outside, but there’s a warm yellow that spills out from the curtained windows onto the dim porch. A weak step whines loudly. The laughter inside goes quiet.

Ash steps from the last stair and paces across the porch. Draws her knuckles up to the door, and hesitates.

This is it.

She takes a moment and steels herself. Thinks of all the time that has passed, of all the wars she’s had to fight to find this. It won’t be easy. They won’t remember her. She’ll have to make them trust that it’s her, even when they can’t recognize her for her face. It’ll be worth it, though. Just to see them one more time. Find her home again, even if all she gets is a few moments.

She squares up her shoulders and straightens her spine. Gives her shawl one last tug. And knocks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if u made it this far, i love u, come visit me on [tumbr](https://clownbasedintrigue.tumblr.com) and hold my hand


End file.
